Qutuz

Sayf ad-Din Qutuz was Mamluk sultan of Egypt for barely a year and used it to stop the Mongol advance at Ain Jalut. He was sold into slavery as a boy, reportedly a Khwarazmian of royal descent taken when the Mongols destroyed that empire, and rose through the Mamluk military caste to be vice-sultan and the real power in Cairo for two decades. He was prominent in the defeat of Louis IX's crusade in Egypt in 1250. He took the throne himself in 1259 on the argument that a child sultan could not meet what was coming. Hulagu had sacked Baghdad in 1258, ending the Abbasid caliphate, and had taken Aleppo and Damascus. His envoys came to Cairo demanding surrender; Qutuz had them executed and their heads displayed on the city gates, which made the question final. When Hulagu withdrew east with most of his army after the Great Khan died, Qutuz marched into Palestine against the force left behind under Kitbuqa. At Ain Jalut on 3 September 1260 the Mamluks feigned a retreat, drew the Mongols into the hills and destroyed them; Kitbuqa was captured and killed. It was the first strategic defeat the Mongols had suffered, and it fixed the limit of their expansion westward. Qutuz was assassinated on the road back to Cairo weeks later by a group of his own emirs, among them Baybars, who took the throne. Baybars had asked for the governorship of Aleppo as his reward and been refused, which is the reason usually given for the killing. The Mamluk sultanate Qutuz secured went on to rule Egypt and Syria for two and a half centuries and to finish off the crusader states.

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